'How in the world could this happen to children?' Former residential school in Ontario to open as museum
WARNING: This story contains details of experiences at residential schools.
For Doug George-Kanentiio, who was forced to attend the Mohawk Institute for 18 months in the 1960s, preserving the physical school where he and thousands of others were abused was critical.
"I want them to see what it's like," he told CBC News.
George-Kanentiio, is from Akwesasne, a Kanienkehà:ka (Mohawk) community near Cornwall, Ont. He said he wants people to experience what it's like to walk through the halls, to not wonder whether it was real, and to know that the children who died there are not at rest.
"They still are in that building," he said.
The former Mohawk Institute — the longest-running residential school in Canada — now named the Woodland Cultural Centre, is preparing to open to the public for the first time as a museum on Sept. 30, National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.
On Monday, the centre had a pre-opening event with speakers that included survivors and a chance to walk the site before the official unveiling on Sept. 30.
Around 15,000 children from 60 communities across Canada attended the residential school from 1828 until 1970. At least 105 died while enrolled there, according to the Survivors' Secretariat, a survivors-led group from the Mohawk Institute that aims to support investigations into missing children at the site. Students died of illness or injury, or ran away and died elsewhere.
The Woodland Cultural Centre was established two years after the residential school closed to focus on gathering research and artifacts. It has been closed to the public since 2019 for renovations.
Heather George is the Woodland Cultural Centre's executive director and chief curator. She's also George-Kanentiio's niece.
"Most of us that work at Woodland Cultural Centre have family members who were brought here as children," she said.
"It's very meaningful for us to ensure that their stories are represented, and that the public has access to those stories right in the very space where the abuse and the experiences … happened."
She said the space needed extensive renovations, including the removal of asbestos and lead paint throughout the building.
"It wasn't a safe space for children to be in. And one of the biggest laments that we hear from survivors is it's too clean now," said George.
She said it was important for the team to preserve the words of the survivors. That's why people visiting the museum will find their words written on "desks, on tables, on walls."
George-Kanentiio said he was taken to the train that would transport them 600 kilometres to Brantford, Ont., during a "very bitter, cold January." They waited around seven hours until three in the morning, "huddled in the corner of that train station" in Brantford before a staff member picked them up.
There were four things, George-Kanentiio said, that defined his life at the residential school.
One of them was fear, "fear of getting beaten, fear of being selected by a supervisor for whatever deviant purposes they had," he said.
Hunger was another. George-Kanentiio talked about how he and other children had to work in gardening and planted and harvested "fantastic" yields of fruits and vegetables.
"But it wasn't served to us. We didn't get that fruit. We didn't get those cantaloupes."
Feelings of abandonment also plagued his stay at the residential school, alongside questions of "how could your parents, if they truly loved you, and how could your individual community leaders allow this to happen?"
"The last thing that we carried throughout our adult lives was rage, anger, deep abiding anger," said George-Kanentiio.
"I was involved, personally, in a lot of fights, because how else do you vent that kind of emotion?" he said.
George-Kanentiio was eventually expelled from the Mohawk Institute, but not before facing ruthless abuse of all kinds.
"My experiences are vivid, and they're painful, and they're on the border of obscenity because of details of what happened to children," he said.
He said he was "emphatic" about keeping the building when it was time to make a choice about whether it should be demolished.
"It should be a place of learning where anyone, and especially [students] can go to and walk through the halls and see life as it was," said George-Kanentiio.
'How in the world could this happen to children?'In order to put together the museum, historians had to go through "mountains" of records, according to Rick Hill, senior historian and curator on the project.
He said, based on his research and the survivors' testimonies, there are several recurring themes.
"The kids were always hungry. There was a lot of violence going on here. It was very lonely. And so we kind of built the exhibition around those themes," said Hill.
The school was unusual in some ways, Hill said, as most children worked for half the day and spent only a few hours in the classroom.
He said this has been the most difficult and personally "heart wrenching" exhibition he's had to put together in his 50 years of experience.
"What allowed me to persevere is no matter how bad I felt or how upset I got, it's nothing compared to what the children went through here," said Hill.
He said there were days when he left the building thinking, "how in the world could this happen to children?"
"But I'm glad to be part of the recovery, part of the healing. That is what this space is all about," said Hill.
A national 24-hour Indian Residential School Crisis Line is available at 1-866-925-4419 for emotional and crisis referral services for survivors and those affected.
Mental health counselling and crisis support are also available 24 hours a day, seven days a week through the Hope for Wellness hotline at 1-855-242-3310 or by online chat.
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